


paper thin

by museaway



Category: Smallville
Genre: Coda, Drama, Episode Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-30
Updated: 2004-04-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:41:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museaway/pseuds/museaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex has always thought fragility beautiful. "Memoria" coda.</p>
            </blockquote>





	paper thin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coffeejunkii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeejunkii/gifts).



Lex has always thought fragility beautiful -- the delicate structure of a fallen leaf, the shape of a raindrop, veins beneath paper-thin skin on the inside of a lover's wrist. There is something empowering in holding something so breakable within his hands, crumbling the leaf, watching the raindrop spread, leaving fingerprint bruises in his wake.

Now he holds Clark in his arms amid a ruin of glass and green water spilling over what remains of the tank, Clark's face pressed against his throat. Lex threads his fingers through the dark, wet hair and lets his eyes fall closed. Pulls his fingers free and strokes them through again.

This, Lex thinks, is beautiful: this broken boy cowering against him, vulnerable in ways he's always too afraid to show otherwise. Trembling and clutching Lex's back so tightly Lex can feel the blood pooling beneath his skin. His wet open mouth licking apologies at Lex's throat.

People will be arriving soon. Other scientists. News crews. Possibly the local police force. They should go, only they don't. They curl into each other and Lex grasps at the wisps of his memory while Clark wills him to forget.

Inhaling, Lex rocks back against the shards of glass. He feels a stinging in his legs but doesn't care, rocks this crying boy in his arms despite the wet and the cold and the pain. There isn't any blood on Clark's body, just skin that looks puckered and sickly in the light. He doesn't mention this. He holds his tongue and doesn't ask. Doesn't need to. They'll go on, dancing their mutual masquerade, pretend it's never happened, that Clark hasn't hurt just like this and Lex hasn't held him and they haven't --

Clark tilts his face up and clutches Lex's face between his palms. Stares at him with wild, clouded eyes -- it's akin to being swallowed, Lex thinks, to drown in the pain on his face. Then Clark's mouth is on his, hot and scared and searching for something Lex isn't sure he even has to give.

If he's ever had it to begin with.

The one thing he's always wanted. From his father, from anyone. He wouldn't recognize the flavor were he to taste it, were it to consume his soul. Were the word to paint itself across the stars. Burn to the underside of his eyelids so he could read it in his sleep. And yet, here, upon broken glass and a bed of lies, this familiar flavor that still reminds him of the riverwater whispers of this intangible thing called love.

And he wants to believe.

His hands are atop Clark's - too smooth for any farmboy's. But there is truth on this tongue, in its silent declaration against his own. This he can trust, when nothing else, this connection so carnal it cannot be anything but absolute. Something to which they can always return when words fail, when lies grow too thick.

This will always be theirs, this breathing of life into the other. Tangle of hands and mouths and breath, of souls and destiny. Of legend. Breaking like waves and mingling fallen on the sand, retreating to their depths in the sea.


End file.
